-Roger Stone Indicted, Arrested

Roger Stone has been indicted by a grand jury on charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, who alleges that the longtime Donald Trump associate sought stolen emails from WikiLeaks that could damage Trump’s opponents at the direction of “a senior Trump Campaign official.”

The indictment’s wording does not say who on the campaign knew about Stone’s quest, but makes clear it was multiple people. This is the first time prosecutors have alleged they know of additional people close to the President who worked with Stone as he sought out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“After the July 22, 2016, release of stolen (Democratic National Committee) emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1,” prosecutors wrote.

Stone was arrested by the FBI Friday morning at his home in Florida, his lawyer tells CNN. He was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia on seven counts, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.

The special counsel’s office said he will appear before a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at 11 a.m. ET.<

We will see how far Stone’s “I’ll never testify against Donald Trump,” proclamations will go. Also of note, while the indictment details many activities of Stone’s during the campaign, Mueller is only charging offenses that occurred during the investigation. As we have learned, probably best to let this latest blaring headline breathe a bit before making wide-sweeping proclamations of its importance.

+ BuzzFeed to Cut 15% of Its Workforce

-BuzzFeed to Cut 15% of Its Workforce

BuzzFeed is planning to lay off about 15% of its workforce, according to people familiar with the situation, as the company seeks to reorient itself in a shifting digital-media landscape.

The cuts could affect around 250 jobs, the people said. The firm, among the most high-profile digital-native publishers, also is looking to realign its resources to invest more in promising areas of the business like content licensing and e-commerce, one of the people said.

The justices lifted nationwide injunctions that had kept the administration’s policy from being implemented.

It reversed an Obama-administration rule that would have opened the military to transgender men and women, and instead barred those who identify with a gender different from the one assigned at birth and who are seeking to transition.

The court’s five conservatives–Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh–allowed the restrictions to go into effect while the court decides to whether to consider the merits of the case.

The Court also turned down a request by the government to hear the matter on its merits, despite the lower court not having ruled yet. So, while the “ban” will go into effect, the controversy is not dead. The litigation in the lower courts will continue.

From the New York Times:

The policy, announced on Twitter by President Trump and refined by the defense secretary at the time, Jim Mattis, generally prohibits people identifying with a gender different from their biological sex from military service. It makes exceptions for several hundred transgender people already serving openly and for those willing to serve “in their biological sex.”

Challenges to the policy have had mixed success in the lower courts. Trial judges around the nation issued injunctions blocking it, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, is expected to rule soon on whether to affirm one of them.

…

The administration had also asked the justices to immediately hear appeals, an unusual request when an appeals court has not yet ruled. The court turned down those requests.

The Supreme Court’s rules say it will review a federal trial court’s ruling before an appeals court has spoken “only upon a showing that the case is of such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination in this court.”

So, while the “ban” will go into effect, the controversy is not dead; the litigation in the lower courts will continue.

UPDATE: Some reports indicate that one injunction remains in place which prevents the immediate implementation of the ban.

+ What Happened To The 15-Hour Workweek?

-What Happened To The 15-Hour Workweek?

Well, one explanation is that there are simply more things to want. A supermarket today has thousands of options, and there will always be more things than we can afford.

Advertising—which appears on billboards, in trains and trams, on our smartphone screens, or cleverly disguised as a blog post—is now impossible to escape from, and it exposes us to a never-ending stream of products we didn’t know we needed.

These are well-known complaints. However, there’s another important and poorly understood reason for want expansion. Keynes thought that once our needs were fulfilled, it wouldn’t make sense to work more. However, it turns out that there is a certain need that requires an infinite supply of money to satisfy: the need for social status.

This ties into my writing on the UBI and why I don’t think it would end work as we know it. People will work so they can live around other people that work. So that their “station” is with those that also work.

If we had a 15-hour work week, how would we differentiate ourselves from the people that are only willing to work 15 hours a week?

-The Pending Discovery of Alex Jones

A judge in Connecticut has granted the families’ discovery requests, allowing them access to, among other things, Infowars’ internal marketing and financial documents.

The judge has scheduled a hearing next week to decide whether to allow the plaintiffs’ attorneys to depose Jones.

The plaintiffs include the parents of five children who went to the school as well as family members of first-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto and Principal Dawn Hochsprung, according to a statement from the plaintiff’s attorneys.

There is still quite a bit of doubt that the lawsuit will be successful, as defamation suits have a high burden to clear for public media figures like Jones. Jones and his attorney are claiming everything done by InfoWars is covered by the First Amendment, and they have plenty of precedent to stand on. Still, the fulcrum point of any civil action as to whether it is going anywhere or not is discovery, and having probing eyes into his operations is something Alex Jones cannot be happy about. Scrutiny and conspiracy is something Alex Jones is more accustom to subjecting others too. We already know, from Jones’ own lawyer in his divorce and custody case, that “he’s playing a character” on air, allegedly, so no surprises like that will be shocking. More interesting to some, however, will be the financials, plus the fact that if Jones is found not to comply it could cause even further legal complications. Laying bare the inner working of the InfoWars grifting machine will make Jones’ detractors happy, and if nothing else should be rather entertaining. Who knows what might come of it. We will see.

Comment → -

+ The First Day of Amendment 4 for Re-enfranchised Voters

-The First Day of Amendment 4 for Re-enfranchised Voters

Tuesday, 9 January 2019, is the first day that some felons in Florida who previously had their voting rights removed can register to vote again under the effects of Amendment 4. The question is how exactly is that going to work?

For all the uncertainty surrounding the launch of Amendment 4 in Florida, there’s no question that hundreds of thousands of convicted felons previously unable to participate in the state’s elections will be able to register to vote come Tuesday. It’s what will happen after they register that remains unclear.

Despite assertions from Amendment 4 advocates that the changes to Florida’s Constitution are self-implementing, incoming Gov. Ron DeSantis reiterated his belief Monday that the Legislature must pass a bill to help guide the Division of Elections as it verifies the eligibility of newly registered voters. An estimated 1.2 million people are expected to regain the right to vote Tuesday as the amendment takes effect, and it’s up to the state to verify whether any of those newly registered voters are ineligible due to a disqualifying criminal offense.

For now, in order to ensure that no one is disenfranchised while the state determines how to comply with Amendment 4, the Division of Elections has stopped running new voters through its felony database. That means those who believe their rights have been restored can register to vote and likely begin participating at the very least in local elections.

This being Florida, there are more than a few concerns with implementation:

Despite assertions from Amendment 4 advocates that the changes to Florida’s Constitution are self-implementing, incoming Gov. Ron DeSantis reiterated his belief Monday that the Legislature must pass a bill to help guide the Division of Elections as it verifies the eligibility of newly registered voters. An estimated 1.2 million people are expected to regain the right to vote Tuesday as the amendment takes effect, and it’s up to the state to verify whether any of those newly registered voters are ineligible due to a disqualifying criminal offense.

For now, in order to ensure that no one is disenfranchised while the state determines how to comply with Amendment 4, the Division of Elections has stopped running new voters through its felony database. That means those who believe their rights have been restored can register to vote and likely begin participating at the very least in local elections.

But it also means that it could be weeks or even months before the state notifies any of those new voters if they’ve been deemed ineligible. And it would potentially compound any controversy should the Legislature take a restrictive interpretation of the amendment.

Comment → -

+ Cyntoia Brown Granted Clemency

-Cyntoia Brown Granted Clemency

In 2004, Brown was a 16-year-old living with a man named Garion McGlothen. McGlothen raped and abused Brown; he also forced her into prostitution. It was during this time that she met and then killed Johnny Allen, a man who had raped her. Prosecutors ignored both Brown’s age and the lifetime of abuse she had endured, charging her as an adult and pursuing the maximum possible punishment for her having killed Allen. Prosecutors insisted that Brown had not feared Allen, as she had claimed, and was in fact in no danger. The jury went with the prosecutors, sentencing Brown to life in prison. A Supreme Court decision later clarified that sentencing juveniles to life in prison constituted cruel and unusual punishment, but after an appeal based upon that clarification, Tennessee’s Supreme Court confirmed that Brown would have to serve at least 51 years of her life sentence before she would be eligible for parole.

Brown was the focus of a documentary called Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story and subsequently became a cause for some celebrities, including Rihanna and Kim Kardashian-West. Brown’s case then became a flashpoint in arguments about how the American justice system valued lives, with numerous critics observing that whereas the justice system often bends over backward to excuse away crimes committed by men, it offers no such leniency otherwise. This, then, serves as a step in the right direction.

So I was listening to NPR this morning and a Japanese economist was talking about their “lost decade” and chalked it up to what he termed “balance sheet recession.” Basically, too many people had too much debt, and when all these bad assets appeared, everyone scrambled to get their balance sheets in order rather…

If anyone hasn’t noticed this about using the Fed as part of a bad bank strategy: John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics LLC in New York, and Matt Chasin, chief operating officer of Sorin Capital Management LLC, a Stamford, Connecticut-based hedge fund that manages about $1 billion, say the Treasury Department should provide loans at…

So today is Lundi Gras, better known as the day before Mardi Gras and the second to last day of Carnival. Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, a day we are supposed to spend fasting and reflecting, in prayer or meditation. After at least two days of eating and drinking, it should come as a welcome respite. …

I honestly thought I was done on this topic, and for the most part I am. But given the misunderstandings that seem to have developed (e.g., arguing that it’s “big-government libertarianism,” or that the idea is just an attempt to allow us evil cosmotarians to feel comfortable hanging out with the cool kids), it’s worth…

Predictions are a mugs game, and mine are worse than most, so take this with a grain of salt. But I see two likely narratives emerging concerning Arnold Schwarzenegger, neither of which I like. Schwarzenegger’s golden political image has been tarnished lately by the utter fiscal insolvency of California. Part of this can be explained…

I understand that there are arguments to be made against the practice of talking politics at award shows or similar. I don’t want awards show recipients to be making on-air harangues about unrelated partisan topics at the Oscars, and I understand the frustrations of social conservatives who feel like Hollywood is against them, politically. However,…

Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with this sense that all of this is an exercise in futility – that there is simply too much to know, too much I don’t know, too much I don’t or can’t understand. My ignorance on this or that subject is laid bare by the revelation of some new fact, some history…

In my alter ego, I’m studying to be a priest in the Anglican Church. With The League’s permission, I’m posting a link to the audio of a sermon I gave recently at my home church. The text of my sermon is The Book of Jonah. You can read that book–an excellent, four short chapters–here (in…

Lament by Rainer Maria Rilke Everything is far and long gone by. I think that the star glittering above me has been dead for a million years. I think there were tears in the car I heard pass and something terrible was said. A clock has stopped striking in the house across the road… When…

Now, I’m not a big fan of the shadowy, Illumanti-style cabal that secretly pulls the strings and keesp you and me down. But if our scheming entrenched WASP power brokers can’t steal the skulls of centuries-dead American Indian revolutionaries and display them in their inner sanctums… what’s the point?

Daniel Larison has a sharp post up (which Andrew has linked to) that I think really demands attention, as his discussion of patriotism and criticism of one’s country really hits home. Daniel writes One of the most tired accusations is that so-and-so “blames America first,” which in a more sane world would be understood as…

Robert Stacy McCain reveals both an inherent lack of understanding regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict, and an unhealthy degree of bloody, American-made machismo. Really McCain, you think totally subduing the Palestinian people and then “rinsing” your bayonets in the Jordan is the road to peace? You justify this fantasy with the example of Sherman in his…

Helen breaks all this talk of shame culture into a list, which I reproduce for you below. (How very appropriate for a blog. That all blog posts aren’t top ten lists still amazes me…) The Top Ten Reasons to Love “Shame Culture” 1. There can be no humility without humiliation. I can’t repeat this too…

Damon Linker is beating the same drum he’s been beating for some time now, warning against a perceived theocon menace that threatens to overthrow everything Americans have worked toward in fashioning a modern, liberal State. One thing Linker seems to constantly muck up is the distinction between the cultural critics of the so-called “paleoconservative” right…

Amongst several others, Ross Douthat has some really good thoughts on my arguments for a more liberal libertarianism. So good are a lot of these responses that I could probably spend the next month discussing them (don’t worry, I won’t). But Ross’ points are probably the most comprehensive.

The loss of our self-understanding as parts of a whole meant that individuals who achieved material success were able to consider their achievement as fully their own. By contrast, those who happened to be counted among the “lazy and contentious” (Locke’s term) were understood to have failed on through their own fault alone. A society…

This depends a bit on perspective and I can’t say that it’s 100% true. But an emailer writes to inform me that for a bit there you could literally not find an item on Kausfiles’s front page that could be considered critical of conservatives or Republicans. Could this maybe, possibly, a little bit, be seen…

Barry Ritholtz has posted a nice collection of links from different sources arguing for or against bank nationalization. To reiterate my previous post, I’m more concerned about how something like this gets executed and whether or not government can make a clean exit. I think that it is worth the time reading through the various articles. I’ve…

In the comments to my earlier post on The Commons Br. Kain wrote: I would like you to expand not merely on this concept, but on how you see it implemented. Now Br. Dave’s post on whether or not to nationalize the banks helps I think move the ball forward on this idea. He writes:…

Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi on Vimeo. via Andrew: 6,000 separate paintings … and one five minute animated video. It took a student artist two years to paint them all and produce this. Pause the movie at any moment and you have an individual work of art. I’m not a patient enough person to do this,…

Cast your mind back, gentle reader, to the heady days of early 2002, when the original Xbox was released. I remember it well, not only because I was intrigued by the closing gap between computer gaming and video gaming, but because I recall the truly incessant grumbling I used to hear about what the Xbox…

Okay, a fun little photo album here, and more hypocritical acts of “dissent” here and here from Republican protestors who just realized that massive spending and the ensuing debt might just cause problems for the next generation. So interesting that they just struck on this little pearl of wisdom now that a Democrat is in…

(Image via Flickr-er markkilner, Creative Commons) — Ghaffar Hussain, former member of British Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir interviewed by Der Spiegel (h/t Salon). Generally, what role does religious knowledge play in the process of radicalization? A lot of jihadist leaders, for example, talk a lot about faith without having much in the way of…

Downblog, Chris puts together a fantastic post that quite well explains the ways in which modern liberalism and classical liberalism (ie, libertarianism) have a tremendous amount in common at the fundamental “first principles” level, at least if you accept the definition of modern liberalism contained within Chris’ post. As I note in the comments, arguably…

Okay. So, after writing this and unintentionally sparking a number of reactions including a pretty good number of dissenting comments (good natured cries of “ignorance” and “ignoramous!”), a follow-up post, a few other responses including some that agree and some that don’t, I sat down and talked the whole thing over with my wife. Basically…

Earlier, Freddie pointed to an excellent run-down of the various problems with the utterly thoughtless piece of legislation known as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. No sooner did he post that than I learned that, after months of pleas from the small business community, the New York Times (the so-called paper of record) finally…

Is it just me or has there been a lot phrases bandied about lately that come, for lack of a better phrase, trippingly off the tongue? For instance “liberal liberalism” vs “illiberal liberalism” (or posts that begin with “a” then move on to “liberal” which reads almost as “a-liberal” which then sounds like “illiberal”) or…

I found this post to be a good rundown of why the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad law. As someone who has been madly in love with books in general and old books in particular since as long as I can remember, a law declaring that…

Jonah Goldberg argues that a left-libertarian fusionism is not only doomed to failure but is in fact likely to lead to a less libertarian, more “statist” society: As for it being undesirable, I am consistently amazed when liberals and libertarians (and even some conservatives) want the right to abandon its dogmatic aversion to statism in…

K. Anthony Appiah writes: Alan Wolfe is the sort of social theorist who would rather be plausible than provocative. Eschewing the lunacies of the left and the right—avoiding even their slighter sillinesses—he hews to a sensible, if unexciting, center. Which is a nice thing to say. It would be nicer still if it were correct. …

Maybe one day I’ll write about something other than the markets, but today is not that day. Anyway… A response to E.D.’s last post in this conversation: I recoginze that bank nationalization as an option is on the table and is more viable than it has been. The markets are so dislocated (for many reasons) that if…

You may have to put some of this in your Helen Rittelmeyer-style “things I believe but cannot prove” file. Fair warning. I read stuff like this, from John, and am intrigued, and I always think it is cool to see people hashing out these kinds of intra-ideological issues. Matter of fact, it’s kind of my…

1. Please see an update to this post here. Okay, so right off the bat I’ve taken some flak for my assertion in this post that Mormons are “by no definition of the word, Christians.” First off let me say that I do not mean to give offense to Mormons with this assertion, though it…

Regarding Andrew’s post about the full-page anti-gay-marriage ad run in the Salt Lake Tribune, I find I am once again conflicted over the use of the term “Christianist.” While I do think it rightly applies to many in the politically active fundamentalist, evangelical movement, and certain factions within the Catholic Church, can it really be…